Thursday, September 23, 2010

Holy Relics of German Christians Killed by Nazis

Basilica di San Bartolomeo, Rome.

From L to R.

Letter of Blessed Franz Jägerstätter, Catholic Austrian, written a few days before his decapitation in a Berlin jail, August 9, 1943.

Pyx for consecrated Host used by the wife of Eugen Bolz, a Catholic in opposition of the Nazi regime, decapitated January 23, 1945. Even though it was prohibited in the prison, Bolz received Holy Communion just before he died from this same pyx.

Letter to family members of Evangelical pastor Paul Schneider, written at Nazi camp of Buchenwald, where he died July 18, 1939.

Relic of Blessed Cardinal Clemens Augustus von Galen.

Stone cut during an attack of the S.S. against the residence of His Excellency Joannes Baptista Sproll, the Bishop of Rottenburg-Stuttgart, exiled because of his opposition to the Nazi program of euthanasia.

Letter to family members of the Catholic Heinrich Ruster, written at the Nazi camp of Sachsenhausen, where he was killed October 23, 1942.

3 comments:

It is blasphemous to place the "relics" of a Protestant pastor on a Catholic altar. A good man he certainly was to stand up to the Nazis, but it is indefensible to place or classify parts of the remains of a Lutheran Evangelical pastor as being a "martyr", and to enshrine them with the same honors and dignity as those courageous Roman Catholic martyrs to the Nazis (many of whom have already been beatified).

If the Lutheran Evangelical Church chooses to higly honor this man , that is wonderful. But in that he was a pastor in a heretical confession in seperation from Rome....it is supremely wrong to honor him with his remains labeled "relics" and groups with those of the holy Roman Catholic Church who gave their lives for Christ and the in witness to the true Faith.